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To delve into history entails, besides the grievance of hard work, the danger that in the depths one may lose one’s scapegoats.

Jacques Barzun

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Jacques Barzun
Age: 104 †
Born: 1907
Born: November 30
Died: 2012
Died: October 25
Critic
Cultural Historian
Historian
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Loses
Entails
History
Scapegoat
May
Grievance
Hard
Depths
Work
Besides
Depth
Danger
Scapegoats
Lose
Delve

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Out of man's mind in free play comes the creation Science. It renews itself, like the generations, thanks to an activity which is the best game of homo ludens: science is in the strictest and best sense a glorious entertainment.
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Baseball is a kind of collective chess with arms and legs in full play under sunlight.
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Schools are not intended to moralize a wicked world, but to impart knowledge and develop intelligence, with only two social aims in mind: prepare to take on one's share in the world's work, and perhaps in addition, lend a hand in improving society, after schooling is done.
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Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing.
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Speech, after all, is in some measure an expression of character, and flexibility in its use is a good way to tell your friends from the robots.
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Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art.
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I'll read, and then I'll take naps. When I feel sleep coming on, I give in and don't fight it.
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If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.
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The one thing that unifies men in a given age is not their individual philosophies but the dominant problem that these philosophies are designed to solve.
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Of course, clothing fashions have always been impractical, except in Tahiti.
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By the time I was 9, I had the conviction that everybody in the world was an artist except plumbers or people who delivered groceries.
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You never step in the same river of thought twice, because neither you nor it are the same.
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Education in the United States is a passion and a paradox. Millions want it, and commend it, and are busy about it. At the same time they degrade it by trying to get it free of charge and free of work.
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Highly-adaptive, informal networks move diagonally and eliptically, skipping entire functions to get things done.
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[T]hat is the triumph of history - truth absolute is not at hand the original with which to match the copy does not exist.
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Science is an all-pervasive energy, for it is at once a mode of thought, a source of strong emotion, and a faith as fanatical as any in history.
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For the educated, the authority of science rested on the strictness of its methods for the mass, it rested on the powers of explanation.
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To watch a football game is to be in a prolonged neurotic doubt as to what you're seeing. It's more like an emergency happening at a distance than a game. I don't wonder the spectators take to drink.
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Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy
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